1. Technical Field
This invention pertains to a telephone keypad and more particularly to a mobile phone telephone keypad having universal language capabilities.
2. Background Art
Some current telephone keypads, particularly cellular or PCS mobile phone keypads, have ten alpha/numeric keys, e.g. a key with "2ABC", "3DEF", etc., and a plurality of special purpose keys, e.g. a key to cause the phone to place or answer a call, e.g. a "TALK" or "SEND" key, to initiate a a call, an "END" key to end a call, a "STORE" key to store entered numbers into a memory, a "RECALL" key to recall stored numbers, a "CLEAR" key to erase numbers which have been previously entered, etc.
While the alpha/numeric keys are universally understood regardless of the language spoken by a user of the phone, the special function keys must be specially labeled in the language of the user to be understood. This entails a significant burden on the manufacturer to relabel the special purpose keys for each country in which the phone is to be sold. Further, it may occur that a particular phone user in a given country, e.g. the United States, may wish to have a phone which is labeled in a minority language of that country, e.g. Spanish. What is needed is an economical and convenient way to relabel the special purpose keys.